Author: Shuang Wu

As a beginner of Unity, I learnt the information of build project and use the function of Unity from watch practical videos for each week on blackboard, and in YouTube. Sometimes consults with my friends and group members. Coding scripts in Unity is the most difficult thing for me because I felt hard to understand how the script is working and refer to the objects in Unity. This is one of the main reasons that my works were rough and incomplete.

Through the semester, I had learnt the basic development process of create a mini game, knowing how to develop a simple game concept base on the PX goals and target audiences. Besides, I had more experience with team work and how to communicate with my team members even I am still a bit shy to talk.

Overview the semester, my management plan of works were really bad. My strategies of manage individual and team activities were attend to every workshop if I could and then communicate with my teammates about our notes of answer of activity during the class, keep us update with the development of the game and help each other complete the blog post easier.

Although the communication of my team was not very often, we hadn’t argued with our team work of blog posts. We were taking turn to complete different blog posts for different mini games, everyone is responsible for their blog posts and we always update blog post on the same week that activity in class had done. During our teamwork and communication, we were open to any opinions and ideas of game development, and then combined all the ideas together to create an interesting game.

There are still improvements of my work can be made, I will try to do better next time that working with team.

The goals of play testing:

Understand the impression and enjoyment level of game from play tester’s experience.

Do you consider the interaction with the game world is interesting? What is your emotion reaction toward different choices? How well do you enjoy to play?

Method:

Record the feedback of emotion reaction of players while they make different choices toward same challenge. Record the amount of time that they spend in the game.

Question and feedback:

Which choice is being take the most often? Why?

What is the most important reason that keep you play this game?

Tester 1:

I choose to save the sick people often.

Cause saving people make me feel good.

To unlock different achievement.

Notes: the moral conflicts of decision of the game is interesting, but there are not many things to play. Game narrative is too less to provide more compassion with the character.

Tester 2:

I often choose to ignore the sick people, save money and drug for myself.

Cause saving people feel pointless, it doesn’t affect anything.

To try to survive as long as I could.

Notes: the optional quest is boring without many achievability. Why to complete them if they would cause any change?

Tester 3:

I save both the sick people and rival soldiers.

Cause the character’s career is a nurse, I just feel it’s the right thing to do.

To unlock achievements.

Notes: the moral conflicts should be more intense, and decision should be come with consequence, this is the reason why this type of game is popular.

Tester 4:

Save the sick people, and accidently kill the rival soldiers.

Save your people and kill your enemies, this should be the right thing to do if you are during a war.

Unlock achievements.

Notes: there should be multiple ways to complete a same quest, kill people with the same method is really boring.

Tester 5:

Save the sick people and ignore the rival soldiers.

Don’t want to save my enemies.

Stay alive to see if anything happens.

Notes: the interaction with NPCs is too little.

Most of them play this game over 10 mins, and usually intend to save sick people. Saving people provide them with some achievability. Because of the incomplete of narrative, the outcomes of different decisions didn’t represented in the ongoing game, decrease their positivity of complete optional quests.

Recommendations for improvement:

According to feedback from the play testers, most of them considered the game concept is interesting and attractive. The idea of moral conflicts is really drawing their attention, so does the achievement collection.

However, the choices of the game are very little, interaction with NPCs is always the same, and influences of the results of character’s decision didn’t represented in the game world. There should be more narrative of the game about how the decision of character has affect the character’s own future, such as what happen if she being cold blood and ignoring all the people who ask for her help? What happen if she decides to save both sick people and rival soldiers? Would she be admired for her professional ethics as a nurse? Or being rejected by her own people cause help injury rival soldiers?

Besides, the game environment is too rough, the types of interactive objects are very limited, there should be more objects that can be used to help character achieve or complete her quest, to provide different decision and perspective in order to make the game more challenging.

Game Mechanics, Objects and Rules

Capture the game mechanics for five of the player stories that will be incorporated within your game (task 1):

2. Describe how these mechanics will appeal to your target audience.

Movement: Because this is a side scrolling game, so the character can only move left and right, very easy to control.
Scenarios to provide challenge: this game encourage player to explore the game world and interact with NPCs freely. It doesn’t have clear game story, player will decide the future of the character by her will. It shares some similarity with Sims 4, player is writing the story for the character, not the game.

3. Capture the details from in your object table (task 2). The table should include the following :
• Object name
• Object purpose
• Object attributes
• Relationship to Other Objects
• Rules, events and effects associated with the object

Player Experience Goals

Clear image and/or text that describes your studio’s three initial ideas for the game player experience goals

Identity.

Questioning.

Social perspectives.

Clear image / text that outlines your two favorite game ideas. Document how they encapsulate a big idea/concept and take into consideration your target audience

(1) Survival video game that likes “This War of Mine”.

Player as one of the survivors of a war, he/she is trying to survive in a chaos city where was badly damaged by the war. To survive, player is required to explore the game world and obtain necessary resources for everyday life. During the exploration, player will be face different events and each event will be able to complete with multiple choices/decisions. However, every choice/decision come with different results and then lead to different endings finally.

(2) Simulation game similar to “SIMS4”.

Player will be play the character who is a 21 year old new graduated student from university. The character is facing the important turning point in his/her life, so that player will need to decide the plan of the future of the character, and different decision will be cause diferent outcomes that affect the development of game story. This is a open game with multiple endings.

Our target audience is Sally, and consider her basic information of game experience, she is enjoying the type of game such as SIMS4. Therefore, the two game concepts are focus on the interaction of character and game world. Every decision that she made will be effect the development of the game and bring out the different results. Such as in SIMS 4, she can decide the future of her character.

Courage: We encourage our target audience to making decision and then take responsible for the result of the decision. She should be having courage to face the bad outcome that her decision brings out.

Compassion: Cause our game idea if focus on simulation and highly interactive game, so we hope she may feel compassion for her character, and consider every decision that she made in the game is important.

Our target audience is Sally who is 21 years old and very experienced gamer. Our game want to interest her, so the game should be contained elements that can draw her attention into. Because of her favorite game is SIMS 4, so we consider add the element of simulation into our game concepts. Our game concepts focus on decision making, different decision bring out different results, and then lead to different endings finally. Her age is important for the development of game narrative, we choose use mature background and characters in order to increase her substitution of the game.

A list of the type(s) of PX you’re tapping into (i.e. cognitive, physical, social, emotional, creative) Be specific – e.g., cognitive attributes such as visual processing combined with physical challenges related to …

Identity, player should be able to understand the identity of her character and then understand the reason of the character’s decision.

Questioning, player should be questioning how to complete one task from multiple angles.

Social perspectives, the result of character’s decision will affect not only himself but the people around him, so player must consider the influence of her decision from social angle if she wants to achieve the good ending of the game.

A description of why PX of this nature is important in the context of the two game ideas you’ve shortlisted and the target audience.

The PX decides what kind of game that player will be enjoy the most. Looks at the PX of player, knowing the favourite game type of her, then we can analysis the elements that interest her, and knowing how to create a game that she will be enjoy to play.

I had learnt the basic function of the Unity, but I still feel hard to know how to combine them together step by step to make a game prototype. The programing is still hard for me, I had no idea which code should be used in where and when. It made the creation of game prototype really hard for me.

My communication with my teammates was not as much as I should have over the second assignment. I was focused on my other units’ assessments too much due to the urgency of them and ignored many opportunities to communicate with my teammates and better discuss the details of our concept of the game. Compared to last assessment, this type of game was more complex for my team. I should had discuss more about how to work with Unity to them and required their help for I had no idea how to start. My low confident was always get in the way to prevent me ask for help. Next assessment, I should change my attitude toward my teammates and my tutor, and trying to offering my advices whenever possible, whilst asking their advices when I need it. Therefore, our team can learn more effectively to work with each other and complete our work better.

The concept of this game was based on my idea of game in the week 5 workshop. I found the ‘finding missing’ concept interesting to develop. I had many ideas of game narrative about this game, and considered to create a short story of every missing person. For example, the first missing person is under the depression of lost his girlfriend, so he went to the place where they used to be.

However, the lack of time caused my work to be rough and incomplete, and only using the simple concept and design in order to save time. The difficulty of learning the function of Unity caused my low motivation toward the prototype development.

This game is a simple first person puzzle game with not many narrative included. It inspired by the notices of missing person. Through the difficulty of finding missing person while playing this game, I hope people may realize the difficulty of finding missing person in real life and express my respect for the people who focus on this area.

Record the amount of time that player willing to spend in the game, and reason of playing.

Playtest 1:

(1) How do you feel about the game play?

Boring.

(2) Did you enjoy to play this game? Why?

No very mush. The game narrative is incomplete.

(3) How much time did you spend in the game?

5 mins.

(4) What is the strongest emotion that you feel while playing the game?

Focused.

Playtest 2:

(1) How do you feel about the game play?

Too simple.

(2) Did you enjoy to play this game? Why?

A little. No enough interaction with the game world.

(3) How much time did you spend in the game?

5 mins to 8 mins.

(4) What is the strongest emotion that you feel while playing the game?

Boring.

Playtest 3:

(1) How do you feel about the game play?

Simple.

(2) Did you enjoy to play this game? Why?

Yes. The countdown timer design made this game a little excited and challenging.

(3) How much time did you spend in the game?

5 mins to 10 mins.

(4) What is the strongest emotion that you feel while playing the game?

Focused.

Playtest 4:

(1) How do you feel about the game play?

Boringly easy.

(2) Did you enjoy to play this game? Why?

No. Too easy to play.

(3) How much time did you spend in the game?

3 mins to 5 mins.

(4) What is the strongest emotion that you feel while playing the game?

Boring.

Playtest 5:

(1) How do you feel about the game play?

Simple.

(2) Did you enjoy to play this game? Why?

Yes. Challenging a little.

(3) How much time did you spend in the game?

More than 8 mins.

(4) What is the strongest emotion that you feel while playing the game?

Focused.

Observation:

All play testers considered this game is too easy to play and lack of interaction with the game objects.

The design of countdown timer provided challenge for them to complete the game, but the lack of narrative made this game feel boring by the players. The clues are too easy to find cause the game is too easy to complete.